The leader of an offshore electro-magnetic survey company believes that the new reservoir mapping technology is sure to be used more and more by E&P companies based on the results achieved so far.
Dave Pratt, chief executive of Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping says in shallow water in the North Sea, “excellent” correlation has been achieved between Controlled Source Electro-Magnetic predictions and actual well results.
“We have also been using EM technology to image sediments below the basalts on the Atlantic Margin in areas where seismic has been unable to give reliable information,” Pratt’s company OHM stated in a trading update today.
“Every line of our regional sub basalt data library programs has already made sales and we expect them to form the core of a regional library in this area which will have a long shelf life,” Pratt’s company stated. “We see further exciting potential to apply this technology to sub salt imaging opening up CSEM markets in a number of key new areas.”
And the upbeat chief executive added: “CSEM technology is proven to work and I remain optimistic about the eventual wholehearted adoption by industry although adoption is frustratingly slow.”
He went on: “Our data library is growing well and our research on the integration of seismic and CSEM together with sales channel opportunities emerging from the CGGVeritas alliance will provide opportunities to sell added value services.”
Formed in 2002 with venture capital from survey experts at Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre, OHM subsidiary Rock Solid Images won a three-year contract last month from Vanco Energy for rock physics and seismic inversion work. Previously Kosmos Energy and Tullow Oil selected Rock Solid to provide a CSEM survey for the Jubilee field development offshore Ghana.
In July OHM completed a multi-client survey with TGS-Nopec covering the Barents Sea, and in June OHM became one of the founders of the WISE consortium – looking at well data integration with seismic and electromagnetics with operators Total, Chevron, Dong Energy and the UK’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, under the umbrella of the UK’s Industry Technology Facilitator.